I Can't Stand to Fly
by purrfect
Summary: The war is over, and something still isn't right between Ginny Weasley and Harry Potter. "Have you ever heard of Superman, Ginny?"


_Inspired by the Five for Fighting song "Superman" and maybe a little bit of Remy Zero's "Save Me". Please don't sue me for using lyrics. I admit right now I played with the Superman mythos a little bit in this story (well, technically HARRY does) - I humbly ask for forgiveness to make this fluffy goodness work._

"Ginny Weasley, I love you. I can't dress it up with pretty words and sonnets because that just isn't my way. I can, however, offer you everything I am, everything I will be, forever. Will you be my wife?"

There had been a time, not so long ago, that Ginny had been sure she would never hear those words from Harry Potter. Looking down on him now through a veil of tears as he knelt at her feet, feeling his hands tremble as he held hers, seeing the bright light of his love for her filling his beautiful green eyes, she felt her heart stutter. This was it, their moment, and she had waited so many long years to have it. Drawing their clasped hands to her face, she pressed a gentle kiss on each of his palms and said softly, "I don't need pretty words or sonnets or anything else but this. I love you, too, Harry Potter, and yes. Yes, I will be your wife."

He laughed then, joyously, the sound thrilling through her, as Harry's laugh was a rare and precious thing. He popped open the little black jewelry box he'd balanced on his knee during his proposal and smiled foolishly when Ginny gasped at the beautiful platinum and sapphire ring that winked up at her. "There's an inscription, Ginny. I suppose I'm more like Ron that I'd like to admit."

Ginny quirked an auburn brow and chuckled, thinking briefly that she had heard no yelling yet since her brother, Ron, had chased his long-time girlfriend, Hermione Granger, up the stairs. That was hopefully a good sign, both for her and Harry's evening as well as Ron's plans to propose.

"I wondered how you knew he'd inscribed it. Both of you, romantic to the core and too tough to admit it." Ginny couldn't resist the gentle teasing as Harry removed the ring from the box, then tapped it gently with his wand, murmuring, "_Amor_ Harry."

The sapphire began to glow with a soft inner light and Harry tilted the ring so both he and Ginny could watch spidery writing trace itself along the inside of the band. _For Ginny. 'I'm just a man in a funny red sheet_.'

To most, it was an unromantic sentiment. To Ginny, who had loved Harry Potter for more than half of her life, the words meant almost more than the proposal. Sliding down to kneel with him, Ginny let the tears of joy come. Harry gathered her close and, his own voice suspiciously choked, murmured, "I'll never forget, Ginny."

_Two years earlier_

Harry Potter had lived through a war and it had changed him. Everyone said so. Even his best mate, Ron Weasley, seemed worried about Harry, and it was not like Ron to worry about things he couldn't change. Only Ron's younger sister Ginny seemed unconcerned with Harry's silence. It was why he started to seek her out. She didn't ask questions he couldn't answer, didn't push him to make a decision about the rest of his life; Ginny, with her calm eyes and gentle smile, simply let him be. He treasured each moment he could spend in her company and if, sometimes, it made him maudlin that he could never be more than her friend, he decided the twinkle in her eyes could be enough to sustain anyone through dark times.

Ginny had her own reasons for keeping silent on the topic of Harry. For one, she was an intensely private person herself since the war. While everyone else in the wizarding world seemed content to mourn in public for their fallen heroes and lost innocence, Ginny pulled inward, searching for answers to questions few normal twenty year olds asked themselves. For two, Ginny secretly nursed in her heart the hope that Harry's choice of her as companion and confidant meant more than that he just needed some serenity in his troubled life. If some small part of her wondered if she wasn't being selfish harboring such hopes in the face of his pain and despair, the rest of her had loved Harry too long to care.

Not that she hadn't spent almost as much time loving him as she had denying that she loved him.

Ginny had been only 10 the first time she had seen the famous Harry Potter. Already she had been in awe of him, as celebrity, as outcast, as savior. To see him in the flesh, bashful and humble and bewildered, had only sent Ginny's heart fluttering wildly. For a ten year old, it had been a scary feeling. She had spent the next year of her life, before she entered Hogwarts as the last of the Weasley brood, dreaming of fairy tales and princes and weddings, with Harry as knight in shining armor and she as damsel in distress. They were a child's innocent dreams, harmless and sweet, but they made her nervous around him, and she had to content herself with the dreams when the reality of Harry thought only of her as Ron's little sister with her embarrassing crush, if he thought of her at all.

Ginny would be only eleven when Harry rescued her. After the horror of Tom Riddle and the Chamber of Secrets, Ginny set aside childish daydreams for an uneasy friendship with Harry Potter. While she was grateful for the rescue and his understanding, her female pride was irked that she had needed rescuing at all. Wasn't she a witch in her own right? So maybe her innocent heart still sped up a little when Harry was near; it was only the residual of hero worship, she assured herself. For himself, Harry found his feelings leaning more toward protectiveness than anything else, though he had to admit he admired her courage.

Somewhere between the Tri-Wizard tournament at twelve and a battle with Death Eaters in the Ministry of Magic at thirteen, Ginny began to appreciate her gifts as witch and ally in the continuous fight against Voldemort. She stopped being afraid to say the dark wizard's name and became a valuable and important member of Dumbledore's Army. She tried to ignore the fact that a look of approval from Harry's gentle green eyes had the power to send her tender heart soaring. He was, after all, _Harry Potter_, expected savior of the wizarding world; it was only natural that his praise made her pale skin flush with pleasure and pride. If maybe Harry found himself lingering a bit too long as she conjured her Patronus, he assured himself it was again his right as honorary Weasley.

At fourteen and even fifteen, Ginny watched with amusement as Harry and Ron bumbled into the dark mire of adolescence. Secure in her own ability to handle the opposite sex, she giggled and sighed and cried with Hermione Granger, Harry's other best friend and Ron's soon-to-be-girlfriend, over their foibles. If maybe her own heart ached a little to see Harry shyly asking Cho Chang or Lavender Brown or any other number of girls who wanted a piece of the famous Harry Potter to go with him to Hogsmeade, Ginny assured herself that she only wished for simpler days of fairy tales and childish crushes. She did, after all, have her own social life. She did not know that Harry quietly took aside several of the young men she dated and explained to them, gently but firmly, that Ginny was sweet and kind and that if they hurt her, he would be more upset than all of her 6 brothers put together.

She was sixteen and watching Harry, Ron and Hermine graduate from Hogwarts when it dawned on her that just maybe she would never see Harry Potter again. In all her years at Hogwarts, Ginny had managed to be embroiled in some shape or fashion in Harry's battles with Voldemort. Now, he would be elsewhere and she would be unable to help him. It was a sobering thought, a terrifying thought, that he would not have her to watch over him, but she assured herself it was just the understandable concern of one friend for another that had her promising Ron and Hermione to contact her if anything were to happen. Harry did not know she asked after him, but he thought of her long red hair and lovely face occasionally, when the darkness threatened to overwhelm him.

Seventeen, eighteen and even most of nineteen had Ginny firmly believing that her love for Harry Potter was the love of a sister for a brother. She graduated from Hogwarts, joined the Order of the Phoenix, trained body and mind to be an Auror alongside Harry, Ron and Hermione. She laughed with Harry as Ron and Hermione stumbled and bickered their way ever deeper into love, cried with her mum when Ginny's brother Percy was wounded attempting to save his wife, Penelope, and even managed to have a few romantic escapades of her own. While life was not exactly good, Ginny honestly believed she could ask for nothing more than Voldemort's defeat. Harry could have told her that while saving the world was his number one priority, she had become his second, third and tenth. That she be safe above all else, even from him, was paramount.

Ginny would be on the cusp of twenty and watching Harry face Voldemort for the last time when she came to the realization that she was in love, truly, madly, deeply and forever, with Harry James Potter. It was not an easy admission for a woman who had always prided herself on being totally honest with herself. When Voldemort had fallen, when she had been the only thing propping a bloodied and weary Harry Potter on his feet and he had gasped into her shoulder his pain and fear, she had held him close and dreamed a woman's dreams of hearth and home and family. Harry had wished, not for the first or last time as they stood on the battleground surrounded by the stench of death and evil and clung to one another, that he was other than what he was. That he could love her without fear was his greatest wish and his most awesome regret.

Now, tonight, on the eve of Harry Potter's twenty-second birthday, when he lay sprawled on his back on the couch in her tiny little London flat slightly drunk and saying nothing, Ginny Weasley watched the man she loved and thought that maybe it was time to try to let him go. His voice, low and a little gravelly with firewhiskey and sleep, startled her.

"Have you ever heard of Superman, Ginny?"

"No. Why do you ask?" She prided herself on the fact that when he rolled lazily over onto his side and blinked owlishly up at her from behind his glasses, she only raised an auburn brow in silent query, her lovely face carefully neutral. For his part, it took a supreme effort of will not to note the way her high, firm breasts filled out the skimpy little turquoise tank top with its foolish slogan, or the way tendrils of her lush red hair caressed the ivory column of her neck.

"I dunno. I was just..." Harry trailed off as he pushed himself up into a sitting position and rubbed his hands roughly through his hair. Ginny tried very hard not to be affected by the way his t-shirt stretched across his chest or his pants tightened across his thighs. While she and Harry had never done more than hug, she was still a woman, with a woman's needs, and Harry was a very attractive man. She wondered sometimes what it would be like, to have his mouth moving over hers hotly as his hands found all the secret places she'd kept hidden for so long.

Giving herself a mental shake as Harry lifted his arms over his head and stretched, Ginny leaned back in her chair and kicked her long, coltish legs, bare save a pair of brief shorts, up onto the coffee table. She did not see the very male appreciation that slid through Harry's eyes, nor the weariness and regret that soon followed. Instead, Ginny made a face at him and said impatiently,

"For the last year you've bummed a spot on my couch at least twice a week, even though you have a perfectly nice bed at your own place, and said hardly anything. Tonight you start to talk and then shut up. I'm starting to wonder if I smell or something."

Harry chuckled, a low, pleasing sound that sent a thrill up Ginny's spine for both its rarity and its seductive quality, and settled into the couch, low on his spine, stretching his own long legs out next to Ginny's. "Well, yeah, you do, but more in a good way. It's always something vaguely piquant."

"Was piquant on your word of the day calendar?"

"Now, now, Ginny, is that any way to treat a guest? I do, despite whatever Hermione thinks, read occasionally, and pick up new words along the way." He smiled when she stuck her tongue out at him. "Actually, reading is how I got to know Superman. Dudley left a few of his comic books lying around and Superman was one of my favorites."

"Comic books?"

"I swear that they didn't teach anything useful in Muggle Studies at Hogwarts." Harry ducked when Ginny chucked a pillow at him, then leaned forward and quickly tickled the bottom of one of her feet in retaliation.

"Okay, give, give, you know I hate having anyone tickle my feet!"

When her giggles and his self-satisfied smirk had both disappeared, Harry did something completely unexpected: he slid down onto the floor next to Ginny's chair and laid his cheek against her bare outer thigh. Ginny, startled, reached out without thinking and brushed her fingers through his messy black hair. When she would have withdrawn her hand, Harry glanced back and something in his expression had her continuing the gentle caress.

"A comic book is like a novel with pictures. From what few I've seen, they tend to deal with heroes and villains and the fight between good and evil. They're a little like fairy tales, except for guys."

"Everyone needs a little fantasy."

"Mmmm." Ginny shivered at Harry's little growl of pleasure and approval as her long, tapered fingers brushed the hair from his neck. He needed a haircut, she noted absently, then felt goosebumps race up her legs when he rubbed his slightly scratchy cheek against the smooth skin of her thigh. "That feels nice, Ginny."

"Superman. Tell me about Superman."

Maybe it was the alcohol or maybe he was just so tired of not being able to touch her, but instead of replying, Harry rubbed his cheek once more against the pale slenderness of her thigh, at the same time lifting one long-fingered hand to gently stroke her knee. Her soft little gasp had him lifting his eyes to hers and what he saw there had his hand clenching on her knee. Her eyes had gone wide and smoky and slightly unfocused with pleasure, and Harry couldn't resist his need.

"Ginny."

It was just her name, just that, but it was the way he said it, soft and desperate, that had Ginny sliding down to curl up in his lap, her cheek on his chest, her arms around his neck. "Harry."

He let out a breath he had been holding for almost four years and gathered her close, burying his nose in her hair and inhaling the scent that was uniquely Ginny. After long minutes of only the sound of their breathing and the slightly rapid beating of two hearts, Ginny lifted her face to his, pressed her palm to his cheek and said, "Tell me about Superman."

"He's what the Muggles call a superhero, meaning he has special powers, a little like magic. For example, he can fly, and he's pretty much indestructible. He always wore this great blue and red suit with a red cape to fight crime. I was in awe of him as a child. I wanted to be him, to rush out and save the world..."

Ginny brushed her fingertips over his cheekbone as his voice trailed off into nothingness. She could see his feelings in his eyes, elusive and precious and afraid, and something told her that this conversation was very important. Leaning in, she pressed a butterfly kiss to his temple and felt his whole body tremble. "Everyone wants to be a hero when they're a child. None of us knows the reality of responsibility at that age."

Harry was nearly undone. She was so soft, so gentle, so much a part of his life. He never wanted to let her go. He slid his arms around her back and kissed the top of her head. "Hmmm. Superman's life wasn't all sweetness and light and heroics. He came from another planet, a planet that exploded seconds before he escaped, saved by the grace of his parents." Ginny made an involuntary movement against him, but Harry just smoothed a hand down her slender back. "Shhh, let me finish. Superman had only two weaknesses. One was kryptonite, this mineral sort of thing that could take away all of his strength, make him do things before thinking them through."

"Like love, for friends, for family. What else?"

"Her name was Lois Lane. She didn't know he was Superman. He pretended to be mild-mannered Clark Kent when he wasn't rushing off to save everyone. She had a bit of a crush on Superman, but thought the everyday part of him was boring and uninteresting. But oh how he loved her. He wanted everything for her. The moon, the stars, joy...but never him. Never him, because he could only cause her grief." Harry pulled back a little from Ginny and lifted her chin with his finger. His eyes bored into hers, demanding, asking, pleading that she understand. "He loved her and he knew, if something were to happen to her, he would be afraid to fly."

Ginny felt her heart contract. So that was it, then. This is what had been their problem all along. It stung, oh yes it did, that he could love her and not want to share who he was with her. Ginny had never been fragile; hadn't it been she to take Draco Malfoy in the final battle without her wand? Lifting both hands to his face, she said firmly, "Harry, I love you."

"I know." Harry said it with a sigh, rubbing his hands over his face wearily and dislodging her fingers in the process. When Ginny only gaped at him, he said impatiently, "Don't you think I've always known? People _die_ around me, Ginny. I cant...I won't..." His voice firmed and his eyes went cold. Ginny suppressed a shiver at the sudden shift in his demeanor. "Get up."

"No. I will not get up, I will not leave this alone, I will _not_. You can't tell me a story like that and expect me to just go back to being...to doing...whatever the bloody hell it is we've been doing for over a year!" When Harry would have set her aside, when he would have withdrawn, Ginny turned and wrapped arms and legs around him, her eyes fiery with temper, her face flushed with it. "I love you, and now I know you love me, even if you're too much of an idiot to say it. Fairy tales and Superman are just nonsense, Harry, just stories told to children to give them something to dream about and hope for. Life isn't that easy."

"Don't you think I know that?"

Ginny almost smiled at the frustration in his voice, but instead she leaned in and pressed her lips to his, gently, sweetly, letting temper ease away in a soft rush of love. "Yes, Harry, I know you know that. But I think you're being a little dense, really, otherwise."

Harry was fighting with himself every step of the way, but his hands slid up her back anyway, tangled in her hair, and pulled her closer for a longer, deeper, hotter kiss. Ginny eagerly participated, melting against him, rocking her hips, making him moan. It could have been minutes, hours, or even days that they feasted on each other's lips with teeth and tongues and soft sounds of pleasure. Finally, Ginny tore her mouth from Harry's and pressed her forehead to his. "He's dead, Harry. Voldemort is dead. I watched you kill him. He can't hurt me anymore."

This time, he did set her aside, firmly, roughly, rising to his feet to pace back and forth, back and forth. Ginny watched him placidly, knowing the storm was coming. Ron had the quicksilver temper, while Harry's was slower to boil but much more fierce. Whatever argument he had, it couldn't be only this, that he was afraid for her.

He paused to face her and rapped out sharply, "Yes, I killed him, didn't I? What kind of man does that make me, Ginny? Certainly not a hero."

"Do you think I want a hero? Do you think I need some knight in shining armor to charge up on his steed and solve my problems? I'm a woman, Harry, with a woman's love and a woman's heart, not some stupid little girl who can only love a fantasy."

"But you did. You have. All of my life, you've looked at me and seen _Harry Potter, Hero_. I'm not Superman, and I don't wear a cape."

It was the most cruel thing he could have said to her, partly because it struck close to home. She had once seen him that way, but no longer. Now, now, she could see th fear in his eyes that she could only love Superman and never Clark Kent. Rising to her feet in a sudden, graceful motion, her temper firing once more at his blindness, Ginny shoved him back a step and ignored the burning in her eyes that promised tears. "You think that little of me then, _Harry Potter_?"

His name was a curse on her lips, still swollen from his kisses, and he felt his stomach tie itself into knots. Why had he ever started this conversation, when it could only end badly? He held out a hand in a placating gesture, his temper leaving as quickly as it had come, chased by the despair he had known his whole life. "Ginny, no. Let's not...I can't do this." _I can't lose you_ was on the tip of his tongue.

Ginny shoved him again, gratified when he stumbled back another step and eyed her warily. "Fuck you, Harry. That's what I say, _fuck you_. I was 11 for Merlin's sake, a child with a child's daydreams. You punish me for something that should have you in awe." This time she didn't shove him, instead using her height, a match for his, to meet him eye to eye.

"Yeah, maybe I loved you for the heroics then. Maybe I had to love you like that, first, before I could love you like a woman. Now, I can see who you are under the fear and the guilt and the pain. You're Harry Potter, and I love all of you, from your compassion, to your gentleness, to your need to protect the ones you love." This time it was her temper that dissipated, killed by the aching hunger she saw moving through his eyes. He wanted to believe that they could do this, now, after all that had happened, that he could be free to love and be loved in return; she only needed the right words. Softening her tone, sliding her arms around his waist, she aligned her body with his and took heart when his own arms wrapped around her tightly. "For the rest of our lives, Harry, I'll love you. He can't hurt you anymore. Love me back, just a little, and we'll save each other."

Harry just stared at her, too afraid to hope, too much in love with her not to try. She meant it, every word of it; he could see it in her eyes. She loved him, when she deserved someone whole and pure and perfect; a knight for a princess, a Superman for a Lois Lane. He couldn't help one last warning, even as his mouth moved to within a hairs-breadth of hers. "I'm just a man in a funny red sheet, Ginny."

She smiled, then, a gentle up-curve of her lips, and murmured softly, "And I'm just a woman who loves you."

It was there, in his eyes, as his lips pressed to hers. Finally, finally, Harry Potter believed that Ginny Weasley loved him, silly red sheet and all.


End file.
